


'Tis the Season (to Work All Day)

by zvous



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: F/M, Gen, TFSS2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 01:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13400766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zvous/pseuds/zvous
Summary: Another Christmas brings another one of Thundercracker's scripts, and yet more work for Marissa.





	'Tis the Season (to Work All Day)

**Author's Note:**

> this is my tfss contribution and a gift for @eraberry on tumblr! request was for "idw thundercracker and marissa faireborn doing some christmas-ie/winter activities"

By the time Marissa got back from her most recent visit to the Prime’s outpost, suffered a grueling conversation with her father over the phone, and sorted through the piles of paperwork blocking her from her computer, there was a message from Thundercracker waiting on her desk. It was a day old, and had been followed up with no less than 4 more messages, all in varying degrees of pleading. The original, of course, requested her presence at his base in what would now be about, oh, five hours. Marissa sighed. She looked at her inbox. She looked at the paperwork. She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed again, and set out to meet him.

 

\--

 

On second thought, maybe this visit would be more trouble than it was worth.

“Marissa, thank Primus you’re here! If you hadn’t made it there would be no point to any of this!”

“Point to what? You’re a jet, if something was really that urgent you could have come and gotten me.” Nevertheless, a smile wormed its way through her inconvenience at seeing her friend. Was it appropriate to call him a friend? At least he seemed to care for her well-being, sometimes, unlike other people she should be on good terms with. She rubbed her forehead as her headache from before started to creep back.

“--how important that is.” Thundercracker finished.

He had started? “I’m sorry, what was that?”

The Cybertronian gave her a disbelieving look. “I almost ruined your whole month and you didn’t even care for what I was saying?” He crossed his arms, pouting in a way he had vehemently denied was, in fact, pouting, but brought to mind a child who didn’t get their way. The movement of his arms, however, brought Marissa’s attention to a bundle of papers he held gingerly in his left servo.

“I’m sorry, I’m just preoccupied at the moment.” She sighed, petting Buster where she snored softly on her lap, and Thundercracker looked at her sharply, a note of concern evident. “A lot has been going on, and I have a lot of work to get back to.”

“Well that’s great!” Thundercracker exclaimed, brandishing his papers like a shield and sitting down on his massive armchair (and where had he gotten that, again?). “I’ve got just the thing to distract you!”

Then he thrust the papers towards her, and she could read the title on the oversized pages. They read, _A Holiday Tale, by Thundercracker, Playwright Extraordinaire,_ and in tiny letters just barely visible, _for Marissa Faireborn._

Her headache returned with a vengeance.

“I’ve written another story to celebrate your ‘Christmas,’ and, I’ll have you know, Anna doesn't even die in this one! And even though I only put the finishing touches on this masterpiece two days ago I’m surprised it’s not already considered a classic.”

“Me too,” she said faintly.

“I’ll start,” Thundercracker said with a proud swell to his cockpit. “‘ _The scene: Christmas’s Eve. The time: the evening part of the eve. The characters: Annie Logue, her husband, John Husband, their children, Honey and Junior. Fade in to a lit room, fire roaring, tree alight, but not with the fire because that would be bad, and Annie would be dead again, so just covered in lights…._ ’”

Marissa rested her chin on her head and gave a small smile. There was nothing she could do about her job or her father at the moment, but at least Thundercracker was doing a much better job than last year. As he carried on, she just enjoyed the company this alien robot and his dog, who could actually be her closest friend. All in all, once Thundercracker finished his reading with a flourish and asked for her opinion with poorly concealed nervousness, she found herself feeling well enough to compliment its awkwardly phrased story.

She wasn’t sure if Cybertronians could blush, but Thundercracker’s face and wings relaxed and he seemed to breathe a sigh of relief before he could catch himself and pretend to lounge nonchalantly. He played off her compliment with self-aggrandizing praise, and she laughed enough at this to send Buster running back to him.

“Well, I’ve got to get going. Interplanetary paperwork waits for nobody.” Marissa stood up and stretched, already missing the heat she’d gotten from the dog’s snoring form, dreading leaving the shelter to face the weather outside.

“Want a lift back?” Thundercracker asked, quickly, and immediately looked off to the side.

“Uh, sure. Beats walking.”

She got a smirk for her efforts, and allowed him to open the giant doors and waited for the sounds of his transformation to fade before she stepped out to climb into his always warm cockpit. Buster barked once or twice before curling up at her feet, and they took off back towards EDC command.

 

* * *

 

Between then and Christmas, Thundercracker got in contact with her a dozen times, wondering when she was free, sometimes demanding her company for another movie marathon, but the paperwork never stopped coming, just as there never stopped being some sort of incident on either Cybertron or Earth. In most cases, those incidents involved both planets, and required her attention. Frankly, she was getting quite sick of the Prime’s never-ending spiels about doing things good of humanity and the Cybertronian council. On this such incident, which lead to her drinking copious amounts of wine that night and passing out on her couch, had to do with a hologram conference call between the entire council, which started with her making a point on behalf of all colonized world, segued into a particularly long-winded monologue by the Prime, and ended with Starscream trying to throw his glass of energon across holograms and planets at the Prime. She woke up to a pounding headache, 247 messages from various sources — about a 95% urgent, none encouraging — and competing urges to either go back to sleep or throw up.

She opted for the latter, drank some coffee, and started in on the work.

 

\--

 

Another emergency meeting of the EDC was called, and she went to that, learned nothing, and did paperwork until she fell asleep on her desk.

She woke up to the ringing of her personal phone, her father demanding to know where she was, and realized she’d slept through until Christmas supper.

 

\--

 

She made it through the inbox on her desk and read the “Enjoy your Holidays!” memo on December 27th. She leaned back in her chair, sighed, and called Thundercracker.

He answered immediately. “Marissa?”

“Hey, TC.”

“I thought you were dead!” Thundercracker squawked through the line, tinny where it came out on her end. “You humans get injured so much and dying on Christmas is exactly something you’d pull.”

“Hey, you got the date right this time.”

“You expected anything else?”

A tired smile pulled at her. “After you wrote it down as the first in your most recent play? Yeah, I expected anything else.”

“Speaking of dates,” he plowed through her criticisms, “movies on the 29th?”

“You do mean two days from now, right?”

“I know what I’m saying!”

“Want to bump it up to tonight? I finally got a break.”

There was a slight hesitation from the other end, and she used the pause to click ignore on yet another message from her father.

“I’ll pick you up at six, usual spot?”

“Please do.”

Say what you will about the EDC, at least they had an abundance of runways.

 

\--

 

Seeing Thundercracker waiting for her gave her a jolt of excitement she hadn’t felt in the past few weeks. She didn’t analyze it, just hopped in and let him fly her away in a grateful silence.

At his base, he insisted on getting the door, and she followed him in as he started to talk. “I’ve got a lot more movies than last time, promise.” 

"Aw, we aren’t watching Home Alone again?”

She heard the disgust in his voice as he said “Primus, I’m not watching that again.”

Buster bounded up to her and immediately started drooling all over her hands when Marissa reached down to pet her, tail wagging furiously.

“She missed you, I think.” Thundercracker said softly behind her, and she looked up to catch him looking at them with a fond expression. She looked away before he could catch her noticing, knowing he’d be embarrassed and sulky if she pointed it out.

The main living area was decorated with fairy lights all around the walls, much higher than she would have done, but just the right height for a giant robot. The ridiculously wide projector Thundercracker had set up still stretched along one wall, and he had a fire going in the makeshift fireplace. And over the fire, there was a pot — a cauldron? — filled with….

“Is that hot chocolate?”

“Probably. Recipes are so hard to follow.”

“Smells good, so you did _something_ right.”

He grinned and moved towards the projector, as Marissa got herself a mug from the human-sized cupboard and went to inspect the bubbling concoction. It certainly smelled alright. “This is just edible stuff, right? No poison of any sort?”

“Frag, maybe I shouldn’t have included those metal chips,” he said with a roll of his helm, and she laughed in return, feeling finally free from work for the first time in ages.

Once she had squinted enough at the liquid for it to merit a sip, and judged it passable, Thundercracker had the projection working and paused on the title.

“'It’s a Wonderful Life'? Really?”

He shrugged. “What can I say? ‘Tis the season.”

Her smile grew and she took the seat closest to his own, in the wide armchair with the cup holders, careful not to spill her drink. She fidgeted with the footrest for a moment, before giving up and tucking her legs under her. She finally settled and looked up to tell Thundercracker to start the movie, and just found him looking down at her, helm resting in a servo. There was an undeniably fond expression on his face, and he didn’t try to hide it.

“Merry Christmas,” he murmured, and she returned the look and patted his leg.

“Same to you. Sorry it’s late.”

“Better late than never,” he said, and glanced at her hand before starting the film.


End file.
